Waiter! Is this a garden weed in my crab salad?

Chefs’ new delicacy is chickweed

IT HAS long been regarded as a nuisance that Irish gardeners want to banish from their lush lawns or vegetable patches.

But now chickweed has suddenly found favour – by becoming the latest food fad.

Leading chefs are lauding its intense flavour and are using the leaf to enhance dishes such as crab salads in top restaurants.

While the large leaves can be bitter, smaller leaves have a fresher, tender taste, and resemble that of pea shoots or chard. Rene Redzepi, the chef at one of the world’s best restaurants,

‘At first, customers couldn’t understand it’

Noma in Copenhagen, set the trend for adventurous foraging by transforming forest moss into a star dish.

Since then Irish and British chefs have turned to their own hedgerows to identify forgotten foods for the dinner plate.

Now chickweed has stormed into the list of niche ingredients which also include pennywort and purslane. Tom Kerridge uses chickweed at his two Michelin-starred Hand and Flowers in Buckinghamshire in south east England. Andre Garrett also uses it as a garnish at his Cliveden House hotel. ‘I use the leaf and stems in our Devon crab salad and like it because it has a cleansing flavour,’ he said. ‘I could also use it in a soup or a stew or as a topping with asparagus on a risotto.’

Richard Bainbridge, winner of BBC2’s Great British Menu, is also a fan and serves it with pigeon. He said: ‘It gives the dish an earthiness. I have to admit, though, some customers at first pushed it to the side of the plate and could not understand why they’d eat a garden weed.’

Experts predict chickweed will soon be in supermarkets. It has become so popular that suppliers can no longer rely on foragers picking it in the countryside so it is being grown commercially.

James Seymour, of Westlands Nurseries, said: ‘Chickweed adds a rustic theme to a dish as well as bitterness. It has a soft crunch. Chefs love it.’